wispfox

Via my mom. Mmm. Lego.

Legos can be building block to teach children with autism.

Are autistics really incapable of abstraction and integration and other high-level thinking? Surprisingly, given how pervasive this view of autism is, it has never been rigorously tested. But a team of scientists in Canada suspected that the tests themselves might be biased and decided to explore the idea in the lab.

(via my mom)

Ooooh. An Autism group which actually seems to have a clue! Autism National Committee, which describes itself as 'the only autism advocacy organization dedicated to "Social Justice for All Citizens with Autism" through a shared vision and a commitment to positive approaches. Our organization was founded in 1990 to protect and advance the human rights and civil rights of all persons with autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, and related differences of communication and behavior. In the face of social policies of devaluation, which are expressed in the practices of segregation, medicalization, and aversive conditioning, we assert that all individuals are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.;

(My mom was just here and gave me their newsletter, which includes information on how to join. She also gave me a book put together by the committee, which contains life stories of and by people on the spectrum, called Sharing Our Wisdom)

Oooh.

I go join now...

Via conuly, Girls' autism 'under-diagnosed'.

"Hyperactivity, and interests in technical hobbies have been seen as characteristics of the disorder.

But Christopher Gillberg, of the National Centre of Autism Studies, said girls were often passive and collected information on people, not things."


*pauses*


"collected information on people, not things." A-yup. My fascination, once I was in school and saw the need, was with people, and social interaction and trying to understand why the hell people did the things often very strange things they did. My fascination is with minds and social interaction and such, not machines.

I'm an awful lot less likely to be watching from the outside now, although sometimes I still do. Almost certainly due to the large number of people I know now whose behavior makes more sense to me, so is less likely to cause me to be distant while trying to figure things out. Instead, my investigations into friends' minds are part of my interaction with them.

Heh.

I am reminded by this of exactly how lucky I was, growing up.

( cut for length )